


strange and beautiful (i'll put a spell on you)

by opinionhaver69



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Pining, Romance, disclaimer: NO dubcon/consent issues!!, it is in fact about the yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29997315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opinionhaver69/pseuds/opinionhaver69
Summary: “Thanatos?” Zagreus’ brow furrows in confusion, and the worry on his face makes the butterflies in Thanatos’ stomach launch a violently militarised assault on his insides. Thanatos suddenly finds himself feeling quite strongly, and entirely against his will, that nothing should ever be permitted to make Zagreus unhappy; he wants to reach out and smooth the lines marring the otherwise flawless expanse of his forehead, wants to lay a soft kiss on the delicate curve of his perfect brow ridge, wants to cradle him gently in loving arms until his expression reverts to its contentedly gormless default.“I wish I was mortal so that I could kill myself,” Thanatos says, fervently and with great feeling.***In the middle of one of Zagreus' escape attempts, Aphrodite's Charm works its magic on a singularly unlikely target.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 147





	strange and beautiful (i'll put a spell on you)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song 'strange and beautiful' by aqualung.

Disaster strikes on Zagreus’ thirty-sixth attempt to escape the Underworld. 

Disaster for Thanatos, that is. Thanatos quite safely assumes that the prior thirty-five attempts have each by and large ended in disaster for Zagreus. After all, he has idly tracked each of the princeling’s deaths as they’ve occurred, most often without even meaning to, allowing his bridling condescension for Zagreus’ foolishness to temper the unpleasant stomach tug that always accompanies his passing.

This time, though - they are in Elysium, surrounded by brightswords and longbows, and Thanatos is dispatching enemies coolly, easily, as the waters of the Lethe flow uncaringly past him on their irrevocable course to nowhere. In contrast, Zagreus is erratic; he darts from one opponent to the next at speed, not always checking to see if the first is truly dead before moving onto another. He is imprecise - careless, even - and it is for this reason that Thanatos is coming out on top, this time at least. He smiles thinly as another shade is dispersed by his scythe, his will. 

“It’s not over yet!” Zagreus shouts hoarsely, chancing a glance at Thanatos and baring his teeth in a sharp grin, and the blade of his sword gleams as he brings it down in a wild arc. It’s clumsy, but effective; the soulcatcher in front of him must have only had a glimmer of life remaining, because it expires as soon as the blade makes contact. Zagreus, clearly expecting his strike to have been met with more resistance, stumbles, overcorrects, then dashes forward in a last-ditch attempt to regain his footing, and it might have worked, had Thanatos not been hovering directly in his path. As it is, Zagreus barrels into him, letting out a surprised _oof_ as the air is knocked from his chest, and they both go down hard.

At first, Thanatos is conscious only of the unanticipated impact, and then the ground, solid and unforgiving beneath him. When he tries to move, though, he realises that his limbs are tingling, unnaturally heavy, as though invaded by a strange and foreign weakness; he pushes himself up on numb palms and then collapses backwards, his hands like lumpen weights at the end of newly feeble arms. The sensation begins to slowly dissipate even as he takes note of it, leaving him with a peculiar prickling sensation in his extremities, but it’s accompanied by another odd thing: around him hovers a translucent pastel pink haze, hanging in the air like mist. He blinks a couple of times, wondering if it’s just a trick of the light - but no, it’s still there, twinkling pleasantly in the shimmering Elysian glow, and now he wonders if that hit hadn’t perhaps been considerably harder than it felt. 

Zagreus is already back up, lingering awkwardly with his hand extended outwards as if he thinks Thanatos needs help getting to his feet, or that he would condescend to take the proffered hand if he did. “I’m sorry, Than,” he says, his face stricken, sounding at once genuinely contrite and embarrassingly earnest. “I didn’t mean - that is, I lost my balance, it was the sword…” 

Thanatos scoffs, and opens his mouth to deliver a lashing excoriation of Zagreus’ carelessness and avoidance of responsibility, but what comes out instead is - 

“It was an accident, Zagreus. Don’t worry about it.” 

Which - what? Thanatos frowns, taken aback not only by his own words but by the tone in which they were delivered, easy and light and warm. He clears his throat, meaning to try again, then glances up offhandedly at Zagreus and feels the words die on his tongue. 

Perhaps it’s just the pink-tinged light, falling so on Zagreus’ princely features, or his proud-backed stature, as seen from this peculiar angle, but whatever it is, the sight of him assails Thanatos like a lightning bolt to the heart. Has his hair always been so dark, his left eye so piercingly green, his right so vividly red? His frame, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the waist, his skin like an unblemished olive tapestry stretched taut to cover it - he is breathtaking, suddenly, the very sight of him casting shame on every sculptor, every painter, every mosaicist who’s ever made attempt to represent a beauty such as this in whichever hopelessly inadequate medium they happen to call their own. 

Abruptly, Thanatos realises that he is still sprawled prostrate and undignified on the ground. In Elysium, the earth is loamy, pleasant-scented and green-hued, but even nice dirt is still dirt, and he grimaces in distaste. Gathering his wits, he draws himself up in a spirit of profound affront - hovering an inch or so higher off the ground than he usually does so that he seems slightly taller than Zagreus, which he knows is a cheap trick, but he’ll do whatever it takes to regain the scraps of his lost dignity - before brushing off the rear of his chiton in as stately a manner as he can currently muster. He’s hoping that the world will have righted itself, that when he looks back at Zagreus he’ll just be Zagreus, obstinate and exasperating and otherwise entirely unremarkable, but then he does look and if anything it’s worse, because now Zagreus is looking _up_ at him, his expression open and his eyes guileless, his lips slightly parted and a fingerprint smear of his own blood marring the smooth perfection of his left cheekbone. Thanatos’ heart thuds queasily in his chest. 

“Than?” Zagreus looks disconcerted beneath the alarming beauty that, for a second, had been all that Thanatos could see. “Are you alright?”

“Argh,” replies Thanatos, for whom comprehension has finally dawned. It’s suddenly clear, what must have happened, what Zagreus has unwittingly caused by crashing into him like an ungainly half-witted moron. “Surely not,” he says out loud, his tone dripping with disbelief and despair, then follows up his own words with an evocative shudder. “Eurgh. Oh, I have done absolutely nothing to deserve this.” 

“Thanatos?” Zagreus’ brow furrows in confusion, and the worry on his face makes the butterflies in Thanatos’ stomach launch a violently militarised assault on his insides. Thanatos suddenly finds himself feeling quite strongly, and entirely against his will, that nothing should ever be permitted to make Zagreus unhappy; he wants to reach out and smooth the lines marring the otherwise flawless expanse of his forehead, wants to lay a soft kiss on the delicate curve of his perfect brow ridge, wants to cradle him gently in loving arms until his expression reverts to its contentedly gormless default. 

“I wish I was mortal so that I could kill myself,” Thanatos says, fervently and with great feeling. 

“Um,” says Zagreus, tilting his head to the side in the same way that Cerberus does when you’ve faked him out with the treat-in-the-wrong-hand trick. “O...kay?” He hesitates, then shrugs bemusedly. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it either,” says Thanatos mournfully, and with a brusque wave of his hand dispatches the lone longspear that had been creeping up behind Zagreus, seeking to take advantage of his distraction. At that, Zagreus seems to finally remember what they were in the middle of doing, and he whirls around with his weapon preemptively raised. The chamber is clear, though - the longspear must have been the last enemy left standing, for which Thanatos feels profoundly grateful, because this newfound and overwhelming urge to protect Zagreus from all forms of harm might have driven him actually insane otherwise. “Urgh,” he says again, this time with vociferous disgust.

“Um,” Zagreus repeats. He rakes a (graceful, elegant) hand through his (artfully tousled, gleaming) hair, and his conflicted gaze darts between Thanatos and the doorway to the next chamber, now radiant with an ethereal light and bearing a shining depiction of Poseidon’s trident. “I should, uh… That is, will you be okay if I...?” 

“Yes, yes, go,” Thanatos says irritably, conjuring a centaur heart at Zagreus’ feet with a curt, semi-distracted gesture. “Take this with you.”

“But, Than…” - and Zagreus is frowning again, Thanatos notes with displeasure, his green eye squinting with unhappy concern - “...didn’t I lose?”

“Yes, well,” Thanatos says nonsensically, and promptly dematerialises. 

*

Back at the House of Hades, Thanatos broods.

He had travelled from his encounter with Zagreus firstly to the mortal world, committing to his duties with a kind of bright and demented enthusiasm that must have seemed rather alarming to the poor souls on their deathbeds who had undoubtedly assumed that the journey to the Underworld would be more of a sombre, gloomy affair. No matter how many souls he reaped, though, his thoughts had remained perturbed, until eventually he gave up and returned home to sulk about it. He had been struck by some sort of godly boon, that much was clear, and its symptoms would certainly suggest Aphrodite - but if that was the case, then surely the effect was meant to lessen over time. As it is, picturing Zagreus still makes Thanatos’ heart skip a beat, then resume a sort of miserable, futile pounding, like a bird flapping its wings against the bars of its cage. He sighs, gazing moodily out at the oily waters of the Styx from his position on the west balcony. 

It’s not that he didn’t perceive it before, that Zagreus was… well, _handsome_ , it’s just that previously it didn’t really seem like a fact worth taking notice of. Astonishing physical beauty is hardly in short supply among the gods, even here in the Underworld - and Thanatos, in line with his duties, has developed more of an eye for imperfections. It’s something he attributes to the time he spends in the surface world; mortals aren’t often much to look at, at a first glance, and yet he finds himself returning to them curiously time and time again, drawn to the jagged scars they bear from imperfectly healed wounds, the crow’s feet wrinkles that betray a sunny temperament. They wear the signs of their mortality without shame, each blemish an indiscreet reminder that Thanatos waits; that Thanatos, one day, will come for them. And in turn, just as they are marked for him from birth, their existence justifies his own, doesn’t it? It’s a symbiotic relationship, or perhaps an ouroboros; either way, of course he finds them compelling, far more than the ageless and untouchable flesh of his own immortal ilk. 

Zagreus does bleed like a mortal, Thanatos reminds himself. He might even be bleeding now, out beyond the Styx or the Lethe, somewhere in the lands of his father. The pit of Thanatos’ stomach performs a complicated manoeuvre at the thought, and his mind helpfully supplies a scenario to go along with it - Zagreus fallen, his flesh gruesomely rent and torn, his face creased in pain - before he silently chides himself and banishes the image from his mind. Zagreus will be fine, he tells himself, regardless of the number of injuries, the number of deaths he racks up over the course of his idiotic quest; it would be an act of foolish self-sabotage to care about Zagreus coming to harm when it is Zagreus’ own decision to place himself squarely in its way, with no discernible end in sight. Thanatos knows this; he knows this, and yet. 

“Hey, now, what a surprise to find you here.” 

The sound of Hypnos’ wheedling approach - and how is it that he always manages to place _emphasis_ on _every single word_ he _speaks?_ \- jolts Thanatos rather suddenly from his brooding. He turns, caught off-guard, and his gaze lands on his brother’s upturned face, that sly and mischievous grin. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asks, not bothering to prevent a sharp edge of judgement from coiling around his words. 

Hypnos raises his eyebrows in response, cheerfully unperturbed. “Shouldn’t you?”

Thanatos compresses his lips into a thin, flat line. “Beside the point. I asked first.” 

Hypnos slinks past him, turning to rest his elbows lazily against the balcony’s edge and then flicking his gaze back to Thanatos. “Aw, c’mon, brother. I won’t tell if you don’t?” When Thanatos, unimpressed, says nothing, Hypnos rolls his heavy-lidded eyes and adds, glibly, “I’m taking a lunch break. If you really must know.” 

“A lunch break?” Thanatos scoffs. “Since when are you allowed a lunch break?” 

Hypnos yawns widely, catlike, his eyes drifting shut. “Since my boss decided to leave his post.” 

“He left?” Thanatos straightens, mildly alarmed, then turns, casting his gaze back along the lengthy stretch of hall that separates the west wing from Hades’ seat. Hypnos is right, it seems; the throne is ominously empty. Cerberus lies bereft at its side, each of his three heads resting dolefully on the opulent, garish cushion that Zagreus had procured for him, one ear cocked attentively as if patiently anticipating his master’s return. Thanatos frowns. He can infer what Hades’ absence means, and his addled, lovesick mind protests against it immediately. It doesn’t matter what he knows to be true - that Zagreus is a god, and therefore an immortal - when every imagined jab of Hades’ barbed spear seems to pierce the tender meat of Thanatos’ own heart, in profound disregard of the emotional armour he has spent countless years erecting around it. “Zagreus battles Lord Hades,” he says out loud, uneasily - and foolishly, he realises, because Hypnos perks up at his words, opening one eye to fixate Thanatos in his soporific amber gaze. 

“And what concern is it of yours, brother?” Hypnos asks. His expression is superficially quizzical save for the corners of his mouth, which remain ever-so-slightly, maddeningly upturned.

“It isn’t,” Thanatos says crisply, tilting his chin up in rejection of Hypnos’ assumptions. “It does not concern me at all.” 

“Mhmm,” says Hypnos, his tone perfectly agreeable. “Quite so; to take an interest in young Zagreus’ affairs would be something of a departure for you, wouldn’t it?” 

Thanatos bristles. “Get back to work,” he snaps, and Hypnos, to his credit, does, sauntering off down the hallway and proffering only the mildest smirk back over his shoulder as he brushes past his brother. 

*

As he paces the length of the west corridor, watching for the return of either Zagreus or Lord Hades while taking pains to avoid entering Hypnos’ field of vision, Thanatos dwells on his brother’s words. What had been meant by them? It was true, perhaps, that he wasn’t particularly close with Zagreus, although they had played together as children, and enjoyed each other’s company as youths - but neither was Hypnos, to the best of his knowledge, and Thanatos kept himself at a slight remove from everyone equally, so the cordial nature of his relationship with Zagreus should by no means have been noteworthy. Was he imagining it, or had Hypnos' voice sounded oddly knowing, as he made remark upon Thanatos’ unexpected concern? He comes to a sudden stop, briefly embarrassed by the notion, then shakes himself out of it with an exasperated sigh. He is, he realises, overthinking, and it dawns on him that this might well be another side effect of Aphrodite’s charm. Cursing his misfortune, he resumes his pacing, ignoring with as much hauteur as he can muster the curious eyes of the vaunted shade Achilles, standing guard silently at the other end of the hall. 

From this position, the gateway between the Styx and the House’s entrance is invisible to him, so his vigil is interrupted only when Zagreus turns the corner from the main hall with a dejected gait and a hangdog expression. Instantly Thanatos turns toward him, the pit of his stomach flooding with unwanted warmth, but Zagreus takes no notice, pausing instead in front of Achilles, who appears to greet him genially. Thanatos feels at once rejected and ridiculously, obscenely jealous; he swivels on his heel and glares back out at the river, feeling his face flush and hoping it isn’t visible against the grey-tinged pallor of his skin. Minutes later, when Zagreus finally draws near, Thanatos has just about managed to force his emotions back under some semblance of control. “Zagreus,” he says, acknowledging his approach as placidly as he can manage. Blessedly, his tone emerges more or less even.

“Hey, Than.” Zagreus sounds profoundly morose. Thanatos purposely doesn’t look at him; if Zagreus’ voice alone can stir such unfathomable tenderness to rise within his chest, he doesn’t want to find out what additional havoc the sight of his face might wreak. “You fell to your father?” he asks instead, carefully neutral.

“Yep,” says Zagreus miserably. “I almost had him too. Every time I reach him, this happens.” He shakes his head sorrowfully, his shoulders hunched as if preemptively warding off the pity Thanatos was hardly likely to offer. “I don’t know what else I can do. I’m not strong enough - I can’t get strong enough.”

“Oh,” says Thanatos. He doesn’t know what else to say, and the silence stretches out between them until he almost cannot bear it. Zagreus doesn’t seem perturbed by it, at least, and Thanatos finally risks a glance only to see that Zagreus is obliviously mirroring Thanatos’ stance from earlier in the day, leaning up against the balcony and staring meditatively down at the waters below. Oh, well, Thanatos thinks absurdly, in for an obol in for a drachma, and with a brisk snap of his fingers he summons the gift he’d spent what had felt like hours agonising over while he waited for Zagreus’ return; an offering which, in the wake of Zagreus’ last statement, only seems all the more appropriate to give. “Here,” he says brusquely as soon as the object has taken shape in his hands. “I want you to have this.” He keeps his eyes on it as he hands it over so that he doesn’t have to witness Zagreus’ reaction, like taking care not to look directly at the sun when above ground in daylight. 

“Huh? Than, you - what?” Zagreus sounds puzzled even as he extends his hand to take the gift. And why wouldn’t he be mystified? Theirs isn’t exactly a gift-giving relationship, if you discount the bottles of nectar Zagreus seems to sheepishly foist on everyone indiscriminately, and Thanatos is momentarily suffused with regret over his own foolish misstep. Internally castigating himself for making things uncomfortable, he opens his mouth to say anything that might strip the situation of its awkwardness, but then Zagreus suddenly straightens up and says eagerly, “Oh! You’re giving me Mort?” 

“Yes,” Thanatos says, relief blossoming in his chest so quickly it makes him light-headed. Sternly, he tells himself not to wonder what it means that Zagreus can so easily recall the name of Thanatos’ most beloved childhood toy; instead, he gives a lofty, performative shrug, and says, “You might perhaps use it to call on me in battle. If you wanted to. That is, if you ever found yourself in need of my assistance.” 

“Assistance? As in...” Zagreus’ brow furrows, and he shakes his head as if not understanding. “You’re offering to help me?” 

“Is that so strange?” Peevishly, Thanatos cannot stop himself from recalling Hypnos’ strange comment, that it is uncharacteristic of him to preoccupy himself with Zagreus’ fate. He doesn’t quite know why - it wasn’t an inaccurate assessment of Thanatos’ manner, prior to this bizarre and loathsome new development - but something about it rankles. 

“Well, yes, kind of,” Zagreus confesses. “I don’t know, I - I suppose I got the impression that you think it’s stupid, what I’m doing. And… I mean, you’re professionally aligned with my father, after all. I would’ve thought he had rules against this kind of… fraternising.”

“I don’t think your father has foreseen this possibility,” Thanatos says. “Aid from the Olympians, perhaps, but certainly not from within his own house. Hence, no rules have arisen to prevent it. Consider it a loophole.” 

“I do like loopholes,” Zagreus says.

“We are all aware,” replies Thanatos, a touch pointedly. 

“Yes, ahem, anyway.” Zagreus has the good grace to look abashed at this, at least, and he shuffles in place before continuing. “I just don’t understand why… why you’d do this.” 

“I can take it back, if you’d rather.” Thanatos imbues his words with a waspishness truly disproportionate to the situation, in the hopes that Zagreus will back down and accept the gift without further questioning his motives, which are, admittedly, more self-serving than not. Thanatos has come to terms with the fact that, for as long as this horrible curse endures, he will have to take some pains to protect Zagreus from the danger he is likely to bring down upon himself, lest the distress caused by his apparent commitment to dying drives Thanatos to do something he might actually regret for all eternity. 

“No, no, that’s okay,” says Zagreus hurriedly. His fingers have curled possessively around Mort’s aged and battered form, Thanatos can’t help but note. “I mean - thank you. I appreciate it, Than. I really do.” 

It is honestly ghastly, the way those words strike at Thanatos’ heart, leaving it feeling wounded and bloody and exposed in the terrible ruin of his chest. _I love you,_ he thinks pathetically in some small, dark corner of his mind, and then he thinks, _urgh, gross,_ but still the impulse remains to drop to his knees and press his face to Zagreus’ thigh until Zagreus pets his hair and agrees not to leave again, and maybe invites Thanatos back to his bedroom to engage in activities for which Thanatos’ brain helpfully provides its own modest but suggestive fade-to-black. It is heinous, and bad, and revolting. 

Zagreus, ever unobservant, doesn’t notice any of the turmoil bubbling beneath the surface of Thanatos’ ostensibly forbidding exterior. Instead, he tucks Mort into a loose fold of his tunic - causing Thanatos to experience a brief stab of envy that makes him sincerely regret every single facet of his own existence - then nods cheerfully. “Thanks, Than, mate.”

“You’re welcome,” says Thanatos, proving once and for all that his voice will come out sounding sardonic no matter how sincere or heartfelt the sentiment being expressed. This is a fact for which, in this moment, he feels deeply and thoroughly grateful. 

“Alright then, I’ll, um -” Zagreus says, already backing away down the corridor as though he’s allergic to finishing his sentences, and then he slips around the corner and is gone. In all likelihood heading off already to make another misguided attempt to break out of his father’s kingdom, encouraged, no doubt, by Thanatos’ gesture. Thanatos lets his gaze fall despondently to the scorched imprints on the floor - already fading - that show where Zagreus has stepped, and silently he asks himself what comes next, after Zagreus at last manages to overcome the odds and stands victorious over Hades. It will come to pass, he is starting to believe, no matter how long it takes, because Zagreus will stop at nothing to make it so. It’s an uncomfortable realisation, that that which Thanatos had previously taken for foolishness may in fact be determination, a dogged strength of will he has grown entirely unaccustomed to seeing; Zagreus, he thinks, might turn out to be quite unlike the other gods of his acquaintance, for whom capriciousness and whimsy most often hold sway over even the most important of decisions. He hadn’t previously thought the boy capable of such resolve; it’s only now - now that his traitorous heart has forced him to actually consider the boy rather than dismiss him entirely out of hand - that he finally, grudgingly, begins to see him for all that he truly might be. 

An exceedingly long and difficult day, at last drawing to a close. Thanatos sighs, tilting his head back on his shoulders and letting his eyes slide shut, and wonders quite sincerely if capping it off with a quick skinny-dip in the lava pools of Asphodel Meadows perhaps mightn’t be the worst idea he’s ever had. 

*

After that, though, Zagreus’ luck changes. 

The first time he uses Mort to call on Thanatos, it is utterly mortifying. Thanatos feels the tug of the summons and allows himself to be pulled from his duties in aid of Zagreus, but there’s a long moment - just when he materialises in, right in front of Hades’ disbelieving eyes - in which the strongest emotion he can feel is a crashing, unmistakeable regret. And then, of course, the lovelorn fog once again descends, acting as a veil between himself and good sense, and the sight of Zagreus’ scarlet blood against the pure white snow quite effectively blinds him to everything else. He throws himself bodily in between the boy and his father; what comes next is muddled, a trancelike haze of violence and desperation. 

In the ringing silence afterwards - Lord Hades sent back on the Styx to his own cavernous halls and the passage to the surface wide open and inviting in his absence, a light breeze whispering through it to raise the hairs on Thanatos’ forearms - his mind clears, just for a second, and he thinks somewhat despairingly of how crassly unprofessional it must surely be to murder your boss out of an undying if likely misplaced devotion to his only child. But then he looks back at Zagreus - on his knees in the churned up snow, bleeding from what seems to be a hundred different wounds, his eyes big and disbelieving as he stares dumbfoundedly at his way out - and it’s all worth it, he sees. It had all been worth it, if only for that euphoric look on his face. 

“Come with me,” Zagreus says, before he’s even pushed himself up to standing.

“Excuse me?” Thanatos draws back, thrown by the unanticipated request.

“I mean it.” It’s here that Zagreus rises, and even though the way ahead is right there, waiting for him to pass through, he turns his back on it. He fixes his eyes on Thanatos instead, his gaze steady and unwavering. “I wouldn’t have made it without you. Come with me.” 

Thanatos takes an involuntary step forward before he’s even consciously registered his own reaction; realising this a beat too late, he forces himself to slow, then stop. Forces himself to recall his duties, his purpose. The God of Death, following this boy out to live a life on the surface, among mortals? 

“Come on, Than.” Zagreus’ voice is soft, as soft as the snowflakes landing in his coal-black hair. “It doesn’t have to be forever. Just - come see it with me, at least.”

“I’ve seen it.” Thanatos speaks the words reluctantly; they don’t seem to want to emerge, as though they’re catching on something big stuck in his throat. “It’s too bright up there. The sun, it hurts my eyes.”

Zagreus laughs, quiet and fond. “So? Just don’t look up.” 

What Thanatos hates the most, in this moment, is that it seems almost possible. But although he might not have understood the true magnitude of Zagreus’ character, before, he has conversely always been cursed with a rigorous and scouring kind of self-knowledge, and it brings him back to himself now with a forceful reminder that this isn’t him. This isn’t what he is, this isn’t what he _does_. Death has no affiliations, no need of companionship, and he hasn’t ever longed for it before, or wondered what he’s been missing; to go with Zagreus now would be to act in bad faith, against his very nature. He steps back and draws himself up straight, and when he talks, his voice is as distant and formal as ever. “I can’t go with you, Zagreus. I’m sorry.”

It’s as though a curtain falls over Zagreus’ features, and all the sentiment he’d been unselfconsciously wearing on his face even a moment earlier - his joy, tempered with exhaustion; his cautious but irrepressible hope - is briskly tucked away behind it. “I see,” he says, his tone carefully level, and he nods, more to himself than to Thanatos. “Alright. Well - thanks for the help, anyway, I suppose.”

“It was nothing,” Thanatos says, although it really wasn’t. 

“I’ll, um, well, I’ll see you around, in that case, I suppose.” Zagreus falters, his eyes downcast, and then a sudden gust of wind from beyond the entrance pulls his attention back to it. When he looks back toward Thanatos, he’s alert again, holding himself with a peculiar kind of barely repressed anxiety, and Thanatos abruptly realises the effort it must be taking him to stand here, still, when at last the thing he’s fought for lies within his grasp, so tantalisingly close. And yet - Zagreus waits, as if hoping for Thanatos to imbue the moment with some kind of gravitas or solemnity. This is a farewell, after all, as much as Thanatos has been careful not to confront that knowledge; the greatest gift he can give Zagreus, now, is a lightened heart, the freedom to exit this realm with neither guilt nor regret. 

“Go,” Thanatos says reluctantly, and he sighs. He cannot keep Zagreus here, not when he knows what it’s taken him to get this far. “Your father will not say it, but you are not needed here, although you will most certainly be missed. You wanted to find your mother, your family; this is your chance, Zagreus. Go.” 

The words feel insufficient, but Zagreus brightens nevertheless and holds himself a little more upright, even though the wounds criss-crossing his body must surely be causing him pain. He is magnificent, Thanatos thinks, truly a marvel, straight-backed and proud like the warriors of old; he wonders now how he could ever have thought otherwise. “Thank you,” Zagreus says again, quietly sincere, and he finally turns away, leaving his bloody spear on the ground as he walks towards the gate. 

Thanatos knows that he should keep watching. He is a keen observer of ritual, a firm believer in ceremony, and this has the unmistakable feel of something that should be witnessed, memorialised, and there is no one else here to do it for him. But as Zagreus passes beneath the marble archway, unlikely to ever return, Thanatos drops his gaze. He can’t help it. 

When he looks back up, Zagreus is gone, although there are still signs of his presence everywhere; his weapon, his blood, his footprints. Thanatos sighs, then stoops to pick up the spear. He will return it to the house; it will remain a monument to Zagreus’ defiance, as it should, in spite of the contempt of Lord Hades. 

And that, Thanatos assumes, is that. He casts one last dispassionate look over the abandoned courtyard, the formerly crystalline snow melting into an unappealing red-tinged slush, and leaves.

*

He busies himself with work. People will not pause their dying on his account, and he feels perversely glad for it, because it is something to do, and something that carries him away from the house, away from the myriad reminders of Zagreus that remain there even though the boy himself does not. Idly, every now and then, he wonders why Zagreus still haunts him; he knows by the way Zagreus still appears in his thoughts unprompted that the effects of Aphrodite’s boon have not quite faded as they should. It has become easier to ignore though, now that he is separated from Zagreus by both time and distance, allowing him to carry on his duties largely as normal, only mildly plagued by a directionless yearning that sometimes discomfits him with its insidious, thrumming relentlessness. 

Quite unexpectedly, he finds himself drawn to Megaera, the Fury for whom he knows Zagreus had at one time carried a torch. Zagreus’ absence seems to have affected her similarly, driving an insurmountable wedge between herself and her purpose within the House of Hades, and when left alone she stalks the halls with a listlessness that rivals Thanatos’ own, her whip clasped loosely at her side and her head bowed fractionally lower than is normal. In Thanatos’ off-time he sometimes seeks her out, in the lounge or the garden, and they sit together, silent more often than not. When she does talk, though, a quiet intensity still simmers in her voice and ferocity burns in her eyes, revealing to anyone who cares to look that her inner fire hasn’t been entirely extinguished by Zagreus’ disappearance from the halls of his father. 

“He has no understanding of duty,” she says once, vehement and more than a little venomous, her words piercing through the sepulchral hush enveloping the abandoned garden that abuts the east wing of the house. It’s the first thing she’s said all evening, and Thanatos startles, surprised. They don’t frequently engage in conversation, but when they do, it is rare for them to mention Zagreus - they talk of Nyx, instead, or Hypnos, who seems committed to making an absolute fool of himself whenever Megaera comes near - but it is clear, regardless, that it is Zagreus of whom she presently speaks with such disdain. 

Megaera doesn’t seem to notice Thanatos’ surprise at her impassioned interjection, or if she does, she doesn’t bother reacting to it. She simply shakes her head, low and determined, and says, “We are all bound to our duties here; our fates are not ours to make. Zagreus is out of line to pretend otherwise. Entitled and arrogant, as princes often are.” 

Thanatos considers her words, his spine straight against the trunk of the twisted, overgrown pomegranate tree they’ve silently and mutually designated as theirs. “Perhaps forging his own path _is_ his fate,” he says eventually. 

Megaera regards him flatly, unimpressed. “Don’t play devil’s advocate, it doesn’t suit you,” she says, her words as cutting as the blade of the scythe Thanatos keeps holstered at his back. She shakes her head again and stretches her long legs out in front of her, crossing them gracefully at the ankles. “No. Such paths are for mortals, who perhaps do not know better, as Zagreus does.” 

Thanatos sighs, but does not argue. “Zagreus could find no reason for his existence here,” he says instead, his tone resigned. “No reason to stay. He grew restless. He has no preordained purpose, like you or I; it is no wonder he seeks to find it with his long-lost mother, as nothing has yet been forthcoming in the realm of his father.” 

“And what are we, if not reasons for him to stay?” Megaera’s eyes flash angrily upwards to where Thanatos stands, and she seems about to lose her temper, her hand tightening around the handle of her whip, but then the moment passes and she slumps back down as if abruptly deflated. “Apologies,” she says, her voice freshly remote and her gaze subdued. “But I suppose that’s the truth of it, really.” She pauses, sweeping her immaculate ponytail forward over her left shoulder and absentmindedly twining the ends through slender, elegant fingers. “It’s just that I miss him, I mean, and I wasn’t particularly expecting to. I don’t like not being in control of my own feelings.”

Thanatos cocks his head to the side, faintly taken aback by her words even as he recognises himself within them. “You and Zagreus…?” he says, not entirely sure how best to word the question, a strange feeling rising up from the pit of his stomach that he dimly recognises as the unwelcome stirrings of jealousy. “I thought you weren’t… That is, I thought you did, but - I had the impression that you’d stopped, or...” He trails off with uncharacteristic awkwardness.

Megaera twists her head around, her hair briefly forgotten between slack fingers, and looks up at him oddly. “We aren’t intimate anymore, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says after a long pause, and Thanatos is grateful to be spared the embarrassment of having to explain himself. “We are not particularly compatible as lovers, although...” - she sighs wistfully - “...physically, most certainly. But can matters of the heart, once undertaken, ever be fully resolved?” 

Thanatos assumes that the cryptic question is rhetorical, but Megaera’s eyes stay fixed on him, one eyebrow arched expectantly, so eventually he shifts uncomfortably and says, “Perhaps not. But then, I wouldn’t really know.” 

Megaera frowns. “Hmm,” she says, melodic and noncommittal, and then at last - blessedly - she drops her gaze, twisting a hand back and forth as she examines her nails in the evening gloom. It isn’t much of an answer, but Thanatos doesn’t mind. They lapse back into a companionable silence, the golden scent of nectar drifting lightly toward them on the almost imperceptible breeze. 

The crown of Megaera’s bowed head seems strangely vulnerable to Thanatos, who has remained upright instead of lowering himself to sit beside her on the soft and fertile ground. It makes him feel peculiarly tender towards her, and so, knowing she does not want and would not welcome his tenderness, he forces himself to avert both his gaze and his thoughts. Instead, he watches her fingers as they resume their mindless combing of her long and sleek ponytail, and the act reminds him suddenly of his own hair, far shorter now than it used to be. He’s still not entirely accustomed to the feeling of the air whispering against the exposed nape of his neck - in truth, he had formerly worn his hair long as if to shield himself, as something to hide behind, another layer between himself and the ever-encroaching world. 

_Why did you cut it, then?_ he imagines Megaera asking, her face as implacable and incurious as ever even in the ephemeral realm of his thoughts. 

Why had he cut it? Zagreus, of course. He can see in his mind’s eye the teasing, perhaps even flirtatious set of his expression, the slight smile at the corners of his mouth when he’d accosted Thanatos in the halls, lifting a fine strand of gauzy silver hair between two fingers and saying, his tone perfectly casual, “You know, I like your hair like this, Than.” 

Thanatos had jerked away from his touch without fanfare, saying, stiffly, “Thank you,” withdrawing already within himself, and by night’s end he’d taken a blade to it, leaving it to fall short and jagged around his jawline. 

_Why?_ asks the Megaera in his mind. 

Why? 

Zagreus’ comment had made him feel seen, suddenly, in a way that made the surface of his skin feel alive, electric. It made him uneasy in a way that he struggled to define even to himself; and what purpose had his long hair been serving, if it did not shield him from such attention? Shorn, he retreated again into invisibility, as he liked it. 

It had not occurred to him until now to question that impulse, that knee-jerk reaction. Thanatos pictures Zagreus’ own messy black curls, the vulnerable crown of his head, and misses him with an ache that seems to have no source, no root, no limit.

*

Time works strangely for immortals, because death doesn’t lie in wait for them with the unspoken inevitability of a full stop at the end of a sentence; there is no need, then, to pay attention to the myriad flowings of day into night, to take note of time as it passes, and so Thanatos could not say with any reliability how long it is before Zagreus again sets foot in the Underworld. All Thanatos knows is that he materialises back in the main hall, once, and he knows before he’s taken a single step forward that Zagreus has come home. 

It’s the slight sense of disarray, perhaps, everyone rushing past him with their gaze aimed determinedly at the path ahead and not at the throne, upon which sits a particularly flinty-eyed Hades, or maybe it’s the faint smell that lingers in the air, something like the fading memory of flame and smoke. Whatever it is, Thanatos’ heart quickens in his chest, and he looks about him with an eagerness he doesn’t even attempt to conceal. Zagreus is not in the main body of the house, though, not in any of the wings or the lounge, and so Thanatos only hesitates for a moment before making his way to Zagreus’ bedchambers.

A minute later, he’s grateful for having had the extra time to calm himself, for having been able to once again assume the disaffected kind of loucheness that is not especially representative of the waves of emotion cresting inside him, because as he approaches the heavy velvet curtain that separates Zagreus’ chambers from the rest of the house the prince in question suddenly pushes through it from the other side, wearing an expression Thanatos can only interpret as thunderous. “Thanatos,” Zagreus bites out when he sees him, the brief light of surprised recognition in his eyes dwarfed and then extinguished by the frustrated tension radiating through his frame. 

“Zag-” Thanatos doesn’t know what emotion he’s transmitting, in his face or in the truncated name that escapes his lips, but whatever it is it’s enough to make Zagreus’ expression shift, first into guilt and then into something deeper, more conflicted. He pauses just beyond the curtain as if forcing himself to calm down, with his eyes half-closed and his hands balled into fists. Thanatos, caught in the strange uncertainty of the moment, says nothing. 

Slowly, in changes too incremental to be consciously registered, Zagreus begins to bear a far greater likeness to the loose-limbed, mellow version of himself that Thanatos is much more accustomed to seeing. He hisses out a quiet breath that could almost be a word, then opens his eyes wider and forces a smile, small but genuine. “Than. Hi. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Thanatos isn’t sure what Zagreus is apologising for, but he offers the requisite absolution regardless, as easy as breathing. Then, he takes a single step closer, and says, hesitant, “You’re here.” 

Zagreus’ expression momentarily tightens. “Yep.” 

Another drawn-out moment, then Thanatos guardedly asks, “Did something happen?”

“Lots of things happened.” Zagreus’ voice is weary, heavy with exhaustion and sorrow, and he briefly passes a hand over his face before continuing. “I travelled to the surface. I met my mother. I saw the sun. And then I died.”

“You…?” Thanatos frowns, uncomprehending. “No,” he states matter-of-factly, “I would have felt it.” He knows this with certainty; in this regard, he is infallible. 

As bone-tired as he looks, Zagreus still manages to roll his eyes indulgently. “Alright, Than, I was being hyperbolic. I was in the gradual process of dying, and to avoid having to witness it for what would apparently be the second time in her life my mother sent me back down the Styx. To here.” He lifts a hand and gestures around him at the unchanged chthonic vestments of the House of Hades, unable to entirely suppress the note of tangible bleakness that enters and flattens his tone. 

“Oh.” Thanatos cocks his head to the side and considers this for a second, trying and failing to fit the pieces together. “Why, though?”

“Why?” Zagreus looks at him head-on, pale and drawn and miserable, and shakes his head. “Why what? Why here? I’ve asked myself that question more times than you can count, believe me.”

“No, I mean, why were you dying?” Thanatos’ brows dip as he recalls the terrible injuries on Zagreus’ body following his final battle with Hades, and at the thought that he might not have done enough to protect him a wide black chasm seems to open up at his feet, ready and waiting to swallow him whole. “Was it - your father?” he asks inarticulately, half-dreading the answer. 

Zagreus shakes his head disconsolately. “No, it wasn’t that. It was - well.” He breaks off, his expression clouding over once again. “It seems that I cannot survive for long on the surface, for whatever reason. I’m not really sure why. I wasn’t there for very long at all before I started to sicken and wilt, and the whole time I could feel it, this place, this House, calling me back.”

Thanatos starts at the assertion that Zagreus hadn’t been gone for long - it had felt like Thanatos had endured aeons, in the time between the boy’s departure and his return - and then hears the rest of Zagreus’ words, taking note of the silent and terrible desolation currently casting a pall over his still-comely features. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says quietly, aware that his words aren’t even remotely good enough to stanch the wounds inflicted.

“Why are you sorry?” asks Zagreus, and for once out of the two of them it is him who sounds sardonic, as he scoffs with a distressingly false blitheness and says, “It wasn’t your fault, was it?” 

And no, perhaps it wasn’t, but Zagreus is far from the first to rage at the inevitability of death, and who is there to blame for it but Thanatos? They are both aware of this, Thanatos sees, and so he bows his head gently and says nothing. Death itself is indifferently ravenous; it takes and it takes and it takes, and at the end of the day it is he who must ultimately weigh the cost. 

After a moment Zagreus sighs, his exhalation plainly audible in the heavy silence. “No, it wasn’t your fault,” he says, quietly absolving Thanatos as he himself had been absolved only minutes before. “Probably it isn’t anyone’s. I don’t know.” He shrugs, and though Thanatos isn’t looking he senses the physicality of the gesture in the way it displaces the particular stillness that had crept up around them, fixing them both tightly in its grasp. 

“What will you do?” Thanatos asks, unsure even as he poses it if his question is motivated more by curiosity or by the selfish desire to hear Zagreus say _I’ll stay, of course I’ll stay._

“What can I do?” Zagreus lets out a short laugh, not unkind but certainly bitter. “I met my _mother,_ Thanatos. I can’t just leave it there, I have to - I have to try again. Even if I just end up back here. I need to see her.” 

Even as Thanatos recoils from Zagreus’ words, even as the argument forms ready-made on his lips, he knows that he cannot object. His own mother is here, not just in the Underworld but within the House of Hades itself; if he spoke her name out loud, right now, she would hear him and be at his side within the next heartbeat. And yes, she raised Zagreus too, in the absence of his birth mother - treated him functionally as one of her own, even - but it isn’t quite the same, and Thanatos knows it. With effort, he presses his lips together and swallows back his own dissent. 

Zagreus, fortunately, doesn’t seem to notice the conflict on Thanatos’ face - whether because Thanatos has mastered the art of concealing his own emotions, or because Zagreus is simply too preoccupied with his own affairs to take note of them, Thanatos doesn’t know. Instead, he smiles ruefully, out of what looks to be courtesy more than anything else, and says, “I’m sorry, Than, I have to go. I want to try again as soon as possible, you understand, so… I have to prepare. It’s been a while; I need to be ready.” 

“Of course.” Immediately, Thanatos steps back to let him pass, recognising too late the needlessness of his own gesture; the hallway was easily wide enough for Zagreus to have walked by without Thanatos needing to move out of the way, and now he seems awkward, fumbling and overeager. He ducks his head, dissembling, and Zagreus kindly pretends not to notice his embarrassment, saying instead, “Well, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you back here before too long,” with a kind of hearty bravado that must surely ring as false to his own ears as it does to Thanatos. 

In the wake of his departure, Thanatos slumps back against the wall. He is trembling, he realises, likely from the mere sight of Zagreus back in these halls, wholly unexpected and just as overwhelming. His body feels alert, his nerve endings sizzling as though touched by an open flame; is this how mortals feel, he wonders, when the attention of one of the gods is suddenly bestowed upon their fallible and undeserving selves? He understands, now, the reverence they show, their temples, their gifts, their devotion. If there was an altar to Zagreus, he would kneel at it; he would kneel, and bow his head, and pray, for the merest glimpse of his light, the gentlest touch of his benevolent hand. _Oh, Aphrodite,_ he laments, _what is the purpose of this? What can ever be gained from such hopeless longing?_ \- but knowing the source of his misfortune does not stop him from gazing after Zagreus, feeling at once hungry, hunted, and desperate, wishing for him to come back. 

*

The circumstance of Zagreus’ return leads to the rapid establishment of a new routine, and it’s one that Thanatos finds instantly unbearable. It’s as it was before, Zagreus throwing himself head-on at the same insurmountable challenge, only now his attempts are tinged with a sort of fatalistic wretchedness that is almost unfathomably hard to watch, knowing that his success in escaping the Underworld is a death sentence in and of itself. Back at the House between attempts, Zagreus’ misery takes on new dimensions, and seeing him emerge time and time again from the crimson waters of the Styx Thanatos is reminded of the fool Sisyphus, who also could not accept the natural order of things, and so has been condemned to repeat the same fruitless and unendurable task for all eternity. The gods enjoy this kind of punishment, Thanatos knows - so too has news travelled down from Olympus, regarding the suffering of the trickster Prometheus - and not for the first time he wonders if it isn’t because the gods, bound by the inertia of immortality, aren’t themselves angry about the repetitive and futile nature of their own interminable lifespans, and determined to inflict this helpless rage on others in turn. Thanatos feels it keenly himself as he watches Zagreus embark on his cyclical journey, utterly powerless to help or intervene. Nevertheless he still challenges Zagreus at sporadic intervals, hoping to break up the monotony or at least lift his spirits for the time it takes them to complete their ultimately pointless competition, and Zagreus still graciously and courteously accepts his centaur hearts, as though the gifts mean anything in the grander scheme of things. He rarely sees Megaera anymore - once again she has been sent to guard the deepest reaches of Tartarus - but when he does lay eyes on her she too seems tense, her elegant body taut and thrumming with a silent, vicious frustration. 

Thanatos does his best to tolerate it, this ever widening gyre. Zagreus comes and goes; sometimes he manages to break out, and then it takes him longer to return, but return he always does, eventually, each time more disheartened than the last. It’s almost a relief when, during Zagreus’ latest absence, Nyx abandons her post in the eastern wing to call on Thanatos. 

“My son,” she says, her voice soft, an ethereal susurrus like the skittering of leaves beneath the moon’s cold eye. 

“Nyx.” Thanatos bows his head as she approaches, lifting it only when she reaches out and tilts his chin up with the tips of long, cool fingers. 

“You are needed,” she says. “There is a task…” 

Thanatos frowns lightly, when she trails off. She isn’t typically blunt, but it isn’t like her to be needlessly delicate, either. “Mother?” he asks, his confusion evident in the word, which he doesn’t often use.

“It’s about Zagreus,” she says, then pauses again. “He is with Persephone. I assume you know what that means.” 

“Yes,” Thanatos says automatically, without thinking. 

Nyx’s gaze is assessing, penetrating, direct. She shifts and in the loose folds of her clothing Thanatos glimpses a twinkling canopy of stars, resplendent against the black velvety lustre of midnight. “He has made it out of the Underworld,” she adds simply, unnecessarily, clasping her hands in front of her. 

“Not for the first time.” Thanatos struggles to keep his voice neutral, to match Nyx’s calm serenity.

“No.” Nyx sighs, her exhalation a gentle breeze that raises goosebumps on Thanatos’ exposed skin. “But this time… I’m afraid that something is different.” 

“Oh?” Thanatos tries hard to conceal his worry, although he fears she can see it anyway. Much is concealed in the night, but Night herself is shrewd, perceptive. And in truth he had been worried, too, himself; he does his best not to keep track of the length of Zagreus’ absences, for the sake of his own sanity, but he can feel regardless that it has taken Zagreus an unusually long time to return since he last stepped out of the Temple of Styx. 

“He is dying,” Nyx says. “He cannot survive above ground; it takes something from him, something essential and indefinable.” 

“Yes, he told me,” Thanatos says distractedly. 

“That may be,” Nyx allows. “But he is clinging on regardless, this time. He will not let the waters take him. And he is suffering for it, terribly. He is too stubborn for his own good.” 

Zagreus’ damnable determination, again. Thanatos closes his eyes and curses under his breath. “He will land himself in trouble,” he says bitterly, remembering again what had happened to Sisyphus, and why. 

“He courts trouble,” Nys says, not untruthfully. “He is not afraid of it.” 

“He is a fool.” 

“Perhaps. Your condemnation is not what I need from you, though.” Nyx smiles softly, her dark eyes shining with a solemn, impassive regret. “You must treat him as you would a mortal, Thanatos.” 

Thanatos rears back, immediately understanding her implication and turning away from it wholeheartedly. “You would have me bring him back here? Nyx… He would never forgive me. I can’t.”

Nyx lifts a hand consolingly, as if to calm a spooked animal. “I know what I ask of you - that is, I know of your feelings for the boy.” Thanatos flinches at her words, but she keeps talking patiently, overriding his instinctive complaint. “He is in pain, Thanatos. It cannot continue. It may not feel like it, but this is the greater mercy.” 

Nyx is as hard to parse as she is perceptive; Thanatos doesn’t know if she invokes Zagreus’ suffering because the simple fact of it is unbearable to her, or because she knows that it would be even more unbearable to him. Either way, though, it is effective, and the thought of Zagreus dying and refusing to let go eats away at him as he makes the journey to the surface world. 

In Greece, the eternal winter persists. The snow is blindingly white beneath the cloudless sky, but Thanatos tucks his head down and carries on, unerring. He doesn’t need to think about it to know exactly where Zagreus is; now that he’s in the mortal world, Zagreus’ proximity to death tugs him onwards as though Thanatos is the needle on a compass, and Zagreus his true north. Out of politeness, Thanatos has chosen to materialise outside the cottage, at the end of the humble stone path that leads up to its doorstep, rather than inside the room where Zagreus waits. He will come through the door, like a visitor; it is the least he can do, considering the task he is here to fulfill. 

It is Persephone who opens the door, her forehead creased and her eyes downcast. Her face displays no sign of surprise to see Thanatos there, and no joy at their meeting again after such a long time apart, but nevertheless she steps aside and lets him pass. Thanatos nods his curt gratitude and enters the dwelling, his heart already leading him to the small bed upon which Zagreus lies. 

The sight of him is like a fist, wrapping itself around Thanatos’ insides and squeezing tight. Zagreus’ skin is pale except for where it’s sallow, shining with beads of sweat, and there are deep purple-blue circles beneath his sunken eyes. His breath is a rattle, sounding dry and brittle in the hollow chasm of his chest, and his eyelids flicker deliriously as Thanatos draws nearer. “Zag…” Thanatos says, his voice as soft as handfuls of earth tumbling into a grave, still somehow loud in the sacred silence of the cottage. 

At the sound of his name, Zagreus shifts, his mismatched eyes gleaming like precious gems almost fully concealed beneath half-closed eyelids. Thanatos pictures him, briefly, as a mortal, coins over those same eyes in deference to Charon, and then he pulls himself back to the moment, his mind rejecting the distressing image in favour of the equally distressing reality before him. There is a wooden chair pulled up at Zagreus’ bedside, presumably Persephone’s, and Thanatos perches himself down upon it, ever careful not to disturb the sanctity of a deathbed. 

“Than…” The word is slurred, barely even a whisper, but still Zagreus forces a small smile. “Am I dreaming?”

“No, Zagreus.” Thanatos cannot match his smile; cannot even meet his eyes. He tries instead to recall the words he offers to mortals, a thousand times each day. “I’m here to - I have arrived to bring you home. You have suffered plenty, and for long enough.”

The vaguest hint of a frown, furrowing Zagreus’ moistened brow. “No,” he says; then again, his voice miraculously firmer, “No. I don’t want to go with you. I’m not going.” 

Thanatos closes his eyes, marvelling at Zagreus’ stubbornness even as he despairs over it. “Zag, please. Don’t make me do this without your consent.” 

“I’m not… making you do anything.” Zagreus winces at some internal pain, his muscles briefly straining, then collapses back against the sheets, breathless. “This is your choice, Thanatos. You can choose to leave me here, it’s up to you.” 

“I can’t.” Thanatos grinds the words out, exasperated. “When will you understand, Zagreus? There is no choice, for us. We are beings of immense power, but that does not equate to free will; that is the price we pay for our immortality. We are nothing more than what we were made for.”

“Says who?” Even as ill as he is, Zagreus manages a smirk. “My father? Nyx?” 

“Says… everything,” Thanatos says, nonplussed. “Every part of my being. I am Death Incarnate; I know my duties, and I must perform them, else… else I am undone.” 

“Always such a stickler for the rules.” Zagreus wheezes out a jagged breath that might have been a laugh. “Live a little, Thanatos. There’s more… there’s more than that out there. Even for us. Even for you.”

“Says who?” 

“Me, Than.” Zagreus’ smirk softens into a smile, gentle and indulgent, not offended in the least by Thanatos parroting his own words back to him. “Look at the Olympians - they’re gods, just like us, but they have their fun, too, don’t they?”

Thanatos’ mouth twists acrimoniously. “Olympians,” he scoffs. “They have drifted from their purpose. Not I, nor my brother, Sleep, nor my mother, Night; we recall the Primordial forces that created and shaped us, that gave us purpose and set us loose in the world.” 

“And yet, I don’t know that Hypnos would entirely agree,” Zagreus murmurs. His eyelids flutter feverishly, eyelashes long and dewy against the bruise-coloured skin of his upper cheekbones. “You speak only for yourself, Than - it doesn’t… It doesn’t have to be this way.” 

“You’re _dying,_ Zagreus,” Thanatos says, frustration bleeding into his words. “This is where your free will has brought you. You are not stronger than sickness, Zagreus, you are not stronger than death, and yet still you resist? Megaera was right - you are arrogant - you cannot accept things for what they are.”

“No,” Zagreus says, disregarding the mention of Megaera even as the sound of her name causes a strange emotion to pass fleetingly across his face. “You’re right, Thanatos. I can’t accept it.” He turns his head to the side, pinning Thanatos in his gaze, piercing even now. “I want to make a deal with the gods. The mortals do it, right? So… so, why can’t I?”

“Pardon?” Poleaxed, Thanatos shakes his head. “A deal? A deal for what?” 

“My immortality.” Zagreus’ green eye shines in the dim light. “I will give it up, so that I can stay here, with my mother. I would rather live a mortal life, somewhere of my choosing, than be deathless and forced - bound… to the Underworld, forever, as you are.”

The shock of his words is so extreme that his final stinging comment doesn’t even hurt. Thanatos reels, turning to face Persephone in the corner of the room, snarling out “Did you know of this?!” then spinning back around before she can answer. “Zagreus - no, it is foolishness, you can’t.” The image he’d had before, Zagreus dead with the coins over his eyes - he can see it again now, picture it as a new possible future he might be forced to endure, and he simply cannot bear it. He won’t. 

“You cannot disregard all of my decisions as foolishness, Than,” Zagreus says, and hadn’t Thanatos himself come to that same realisation not too long ago? Zagreus coughs weakly, then passes a trembling hand over his mouth, dropping it again to say, “This is what I want; my mind is made up. I am not Death, nor Sleep, nor Night - I am only Zagreus, son of Hades and Persephone, and immortality means nothing to me.” 

“Zag…” Thanatos hasn’t come prepared for this, for the sight of this boy, his love, beautiful and obstinate, rejecting his dying even as he embraces the idea of a truer, longer-lasting death, one from which he will never again reawaken in his father’s House, fully-formed and without blemish. 

“But…” Zagreus closes his eyes again, the corners of his mouth turning down. “The gods will not come to me. I have waited… I have called for them, and held on, but - still they do not come. I don’t understand it, Thanatos; they do not hesitate to give me their aid, when I am struggling through Tartarus and Asphodel…” He opens his eyes, and the question in them is clear: _Why do they not come for me now?_

“A god attempting to relinquish his immortality…” Thanatos speaks the words uneasily. “To scorn the thing they hold most dear - the thing that defines their very existence. You should be glad they do not come, Zagreus; they may not take kindly to your request, and you forget their capacity for cruelty.”

“And this?” Angry, Zagreus partially raises his hands from the bed as if to gesture around him, although he has not quite the strength to manage it. “Is this not cruelty? That I cannot be with my mother without suffering; without dying? That it is my fate to be tethered to the Underworld, when everyone else can come and go as they please?” The words, or the vehemence behind them, abruptly prove too much for him; he coughs, his weakened body wracked by the violence of it, and flecks of blood-tinged spittle fly from his mouth, almost shockingly red against the perfect whiteness of Persephone’s sheets. Seeing it, Thanatos is reminded of the snow outside the Temple of Styx, Zagreus standing upright and proud and wildly, euphorically happy, the first time he’d vanquished his father. 

“Yes,” he says softly, laid low by the memory. “It is cruel.”

And then he reaches out, wraps his fingers around Zagreus’ too-thin wrist, and - how easily it comes to him - unties the tethers keeping Zagreus bound to the mortal world, sending his soul back down the Styx, committing him once more to the House he abhors. 

Cruel, yes, and yet Thanatos cannot shy away from the part he must play in that cruelty. 

*

When they materialise back in the House of Hades, Zagreus - health visibly restored, colour in his cheeks and his eyes no longer quite so feverishly bright - immediately tugs his arm away from Thanatos’ grasp. He says nothing, only looks up at him with wide, betrayed eyes, then turns and stalks away, his head hanging low above the angry rigid line of his shoulders. Surprisingly, he doesn’t head for the privacy of his bedchambers but instead turns towards the western wing; when Thanatos passes, a minute or so later, he aims a furtive glance to his left and catches sight of Zagreus sitting - _sitting!_ \- with his eyes trained on the large portrait of Asphodel that adorns the wall, seemingly lost in thought, Achilles standing awkwardly behind him as though he doesn’t know whether to approach or to leave it be. 

_Good,_ Thanatos thinks. He has a plan, one that involves passing unseen through Zagreus’ bedchambers, and he hadn’t thought an opportunity to put it in motion would so readily present itself. He turns right, ignoring first Hypnos’ raised brow and second Nyx’s silently questioning gaze, and pushes through the curtain into Zagreus’ room. 

It smells of Zagreus; that’s the first thing he notices, standing there amid the boy’s haphazard belongings and disarrayed bedsheets. Warm, a little spicy, a little musky. Thanatos closes his eyes and inhales deeply, gratefully. 

He has a task to perform, though, and he cannot allow his own self-indulgence to get in the way of it. He gives himself one more second in this most private of places, then opens his eyes and strides onwards through the room and into the courtyard that sits beyond it. He knows what lies in this courtyard, although he hasn’t ever been told; he can feel their power pulling at him from almost anywhere else in the House.

He hadn’t expected the skeleton, though, standing in the centre of the yard and regarding him curiously from strangely beady eye sockets. “You ain’t Zagreus,” the skeleton says, visibly piqued.

“Correct,” Thanatos replies. “A very astute observation. Regardless, if you don’t mind…” He inclines his head stiffly towards the skeleton, this distasteful mockery of mortality that someone has inexplicably seen fit to reanimate, then turns and heads toward the large display case that sits unobtrusively at one side of the courtyard. 

“And if I did mind?” the skeleton asks, although the question seems rhetorical, as he has not moved an inch from the centre of the room. “What then?” 

Thanatos frowns, irritable, but does not slow his pace. “I see no reason why I should bow to your authority.”

The skeleton sighs, which is disquieting, given the absence of lungs; the sound seems to emanate from nowhere, whistling mournfully inside the gaping cavern of his ribcage. “No one ever does,” he says sadly.

“I can’t imagine why,” Thanatos says, reaching the display case and willing it unlocked. As expected, the lock opens beneath his touch and the doors of the case swing open. 

“Those aren’t yours,” the skeleton says. “And yet I suspect my boss would probably advise me to turn a blind eye to this blatant thievery,” he adds sniffily, not quite under his breath, huffing out a word that sounds suspiciously like ‘nepotism’ before turning his back on Thanatos and raising his scapulae high as if to emphasise his personal displeasure. 

Bemused and only half listening, Thanatos ignores this. It only takes him a second to find what he came here for, and he plucks it from the shelf with triumphant fingers. “Well, now you can pretend I was never here, if that brings you comfort,” he says over his shoulder, not particularly caring either way, and then dematerialises, an expression of incipient victory on his face and his precious bounty clutched tight in one hand. 

He travels once more to the surface world, knowing better than to perform this act anywhere in the realm of Hades. He arrives at an isolated mountainside, craggy and expansive in the afternoon sunlight, and for once he doesn’t let the brightness perturb him; instead, he raises the keepsake up high, brandishing it beneath the sun’s rays, and he calls out loud, “Aphrodite! Aphrodite Ourania, I summon you; hear my call, and appear before me.” 

For a long moment, nothing happens, and Thanatos feels simultaneously embarrassed and panicked. He will not be deterred, though, and he lifts the keepsake again, preparing himself to call out once more, only to hesitate as around him the air suddenly begins to shimmer with a faint, ethereal light. Distantly, he hears a peal of feminine laughter, muffled somehow as though it is emanating from beyond some imperceptible veil; the sunlight has taken on a strangely pink glow, too, like the one he had caught a glimpse of on that fateful day, right after Zagreus had tackled him in the fields of Elysium. 

“Goddess Aphrodite…?” he says, uncertain. 

All at once, there she is, standing barefoot in the snow as if she’d always been there, waiting just outside the boundaries of his vision. She is majestic, truly; tall and willowy and entirely nude, although her modesty is preserved by the glimmering haze that shrouds her, concealing her most private parts from view. Her hair seems constantly to be in a kind of sensuous motion, the ends lifted and stirred by a breeze Thanatos cannot feel, and the tilt of her rounded chin is imperious. “Lord Thanatos,” she says, and her voice is pleasantly sweet, but beneath it he can hear the unfathomable depths of her power, and he shifts in place, uncharacteristically nervous. “You are not the one to whom I entrusted my eternal rose.” 

“No,” Thanatos says redundantly. “But I needed - I need - to talk with you.” 

“Mmm.” Aphrodite examines him indulgently, her languorous gaze traversing him from head to toe, and then back again. “I could begrudge you this trickery,” she says at last, “but love can blind any man to good sense, after all… so, you may speak.” 

Relief crashes over him like a wave. He can see it, now, the way out of this insufferable situation; he exhales heavily, and then says, his voice hoarse, “You have ensorcelled me, Goddess Aphrodite. You lent your aid to the princeling, Zagreus - it went awry. I was… struck.”

Aphrodite smiles slowly, her lush lips parting to reveal gleaming, pointed teeth. “You find yourself attracted to the boy, then,” she says, the tone of her words inscrutable, and then she hums melodically. “Continue.” 

“No - I mean, yes, except… it’s more than that. It’s overwhelming, I can think of nothing else -I am obsessed - he is driving me mad. I long to touch him, to kiss him, to be near him at all times; his suffering has become my own. It is a curse, and I need it lifted. I cannot, must not, continue like this. He hurts and I cannot bear it, you must take this feeling away from me. Please.” The fount of his words exhausted, he stutters to a stop, breathing heavily from the exertion of baring his soul. He hasn’t mentioned Zagreus’ rejection of his own immortality, the role it played in bringing Thanatos here to implore Aphrodite to finally put an end to his torment, and he won’t, lest it incite her wrath - and, more selfishly, lest she act on some bored, queenly whim and decide to grant the boy his wish. 

Throughout his speech, Aphrodite’s expression doesn’t change. She is looking at him with her eyebrows slightly raised, her smile faintly disbelieving, the look of someone humouring a child. When he finishes, she tilts her head regretfully and says, “I fear you are mistaken, darling.”

“What?” Thanatos shakes his head, uncomprehending. “Mistaken? I… assure you I am not; my words hold the truth of it.” 

Calmly, Aphrodite raises a hand, quelling his complaints. “Oh, I do not doubt that you are experiencing it just as you say; a passionate love, too, by the telling of it. Quite delicious.” She stretches, catlike, shooting him a heavy-lidded, teasing glance as she does so. “What I mean is simply that your feelings are not of my doing, Lord Thanatos.” 

Thanatos recoils, alarm coursing through his veins like a jolt of electricity. “How can that be so?” he asks raggedly. “I felt it, when he touched me - your influence, changing the way I saw him. And I saw it - pink, in the air - just like it is now. It can’t have been anything else, Goddess; I did not love him, and then all of a sudden I did. I _do,_ even still.” 

She shrugs blithely, a fluid movement like the rippling of spring water. “And that is how I know you are mistaken. I wield great power over the hearts of men, Lord Thanatos, but…” - she breaks off, sighing as if in self-deprecation - “...alas, the boons I have offered to Zagreus are not quite as powerful as you seem to suggest. Their effect is temporary, you know. They last only for a matter of seconds; maybe minutes, at most.”

“But - but, that cannot be…” Thanatos flounders, helpless. “I do not understand.” 

Aphrodite’s expression remains implacable behind the twinkling glow that surrounds her, but he could swear she rolls her eyes. “Men,” she says flatly. “This is why my services are needed in the first place, you see; you have no notion of your own emotions. I am sure that my boon affected you, as you insist it did, but most likely its most potent effect was in alerting you to the depth of your own feeling for Zagreus.” She pauses, allowing her words to sink in, then continues, fixing him in a meaningful gaze as she delivers her final blow. “Your love for the boy is organic, Lord Thanatos. It does not come from me, but from yourself; all I did was force you to become aware of it.”

It is unfathomable, incredible in the most literal sense of the word, and yet Thanatos recognises the truth when he hears it. He thinks again, wildly, of the near demented fervour in which he had taken a blade to his hair, all because Zagreus had complimented him on it, and then he remembers how he had thought of himself as a creature of ultimate self-knowledge, and laughs, the sound tinged with mild hysteria. “I love him?” he asks, reeling still, the words dripping with disbelief. “Really and truly?” 

“Is that not what you said to me, only a moment ago?” Aphrodite lifts and drops a shoulder in a lazy approximation of a shrug. “You are beginning to bore me. If there’s nothing else, I think I will be taking my leave.” 

Thanatos says nothing, still flashing back over his own history with Zagreus, reliving conversations, recontextualising them. Aphrodite, clearly taking his distracted silence as assent, begins to dematerialise, the shape of her becoming paler and more intangible by the second, and then Thanatos remembers something, one last thing that doesn’t quite fit. “Wait,” he calls out abruptly.

“Hm?” Aphrodite pauses, raising her chin expectantly. The pink haze has faded; Thanatos can see the snowy peaks of the mountains through her newly translucent form. “What is it?”

“The boon…” Thanatos breaks off, still dazed enough that it is a struggle to compose his thoughts. “I am a god - and it was far from the first time that Zagreus had aimed poorly - but they do not affect me, usually. Why should yours have been any different?”

Aphrodite straightens up, surprised, then lets out a brief chime of laughter. “Oh. Well, that, I must admit my hand in it.” She smiles, guiltless, her lips an inviting curve. “I have become quite invested in the boy’s romantic prospects, you see, as I have closely followed his journeys through the Underworld. I knew of your feelings towards him, even before you did, and I knew of his for you, the same. And so… Perhaps I urged things along. Just a little bit.”

“Oh.” Thanatos considers her words, then raises his head sharply. “Wait - his, for me? What does that mean?”

She smiles enigmatically. “Goodbye, Lord Thanatos,” she says formally, and then she’s gone, leaving nothing behind save for the faintest pink shimmer where once she stood. 

*

Afterwards, Thanatos feels lost, directionless, too scattered to return to his duties and yet too apprehensive to consider facing Zagreus in the House, so instead he makes the short journey back to Persephone’s cottage, the sun now low on the horizon, streaks of orange and violet crisscrossing the sky like great gouges left by celestial fingers. Once again, he knocks on the door; once again, Persephone answers. 

This time, her eyes widen in surprise, but she recovers quickly, gathering her shawl around her shoulders and holding the edges together with nimble fingers. “What an honour,” she says, her voice tart, “to receive the God of Death twice on the same day. But I think I can assure you, Thanatos, your services are no longer required here.”

“I’m not here for that,” Thanatos says, matching her tone with his own crispness. “I’m here to talk. May I come in?” 

“Death himself, asking if he can enter?” Persephone raises an eyebrow, but steps away from the doorway regardless. “Would that mortals found themselves so lucky.” 

He ignores the arch remark, walking past her into the cottage for the second time that day. This time, though, he turns away from Zagreus’ now-empty bier, taking a seat with his back to it at the roughly-hewn wooden table that sits in the middle of the room. Here, he repeats the question he asked that morning - at the time too agitated to hear her answer, if any had been forthcoming. “Did you know what Zagreus was planning? The deal he intended - intends - to strike with the gods?” 

Persephone sighs, leaving the door open to let in the soft evening breeze and the last of the sun’s light, then crosses the room and deposits herself down in the chair opposite his. “No,” she says eventually, once she’s settled in, folding her hands demurely in her lap. “That he was planning something - that seems to be a safe bet, when it comes to Zagreus. But he was not open about the details, and yes, Thanatos, despite what you might think of me, if I had been aware then I would have made attempt to dissuade him.” 

“That’s not good enough,” Thanatos says, a note of anger creeping into his voice. “You should have pushed him - you should have -”

“I will not stand for this, Thanatos,” Persephone interrupts, her eyes steely and her tone perfectly level. “It is not for you to sit here, a guest in my home, and tell me what I should have done with regards to my own son. What did _you_ do to stop him?” 

“That’s different,” Thanatos says heatedly, as within him burgeons a growing suspicion that he might already be losing the argument he came here to have. 

“Oh?” Persephone crosses her arms in front of her chest, her posture suddenly expectant. “How so, may I ask?” 

“Because - he won’t listen to me,” Thanatos says, miserable. “He doesn’t care what I think. But you… he would listen to what you told him. I know it.” 

“You know it?” Persephone laughs disbelievingly, without mirth. “I told him not to come back here, two or three visits ago. And yet, earlier today - you took him from right over there, the bed in that corner, didn’t you? So do you think he listened to me?” 

“You - you turned him away?” Caught off guard, Thanatos straightens up, his brow furrowing. “He came all this way to find you, and you rejected him?”

“No,” Persephone replies, although in the squared set of her shoulders Thanatos can see that she feels defensive, perhaps even guilty. “I welcomed him - the first time, and then after… He is my son, Thanatos. I’d thought he was dead; I was overjoyed to find out that he lived, after so many years.” 

“Then…” Thanatos shakes his head, nonplussed. “Why? Why tell him to leave, if that’s how you felt?” 

“Because every time he came back here, I would have to watch him die!” She is upset, now, her voice rising and her godly lineage clear in the sudden frosty chill that asserts itself over the room. “To watch your child suffer, unable to do a single thing to help them… It is torture! Torment! But you, Death - oh, I don’t expect you to understand the agony of it; it is not in your nature.” 

“On the contrary,” Thanatos says softly, lowering his gaze to the pockmarked tabletop. “I understand it far more than you think, Persephone.” 

There is silence. It persists until Thanatos, unable to bear it any longer, glances up; Persephone is perfectly still, one hand resting palm-down on the table as if arrested in the motion of reaching out, her eyes trained on him and luminous with fresh understanding. When she finally speaks, her voice is calm again, quiet if not quite serene. “And is that why you’re here, Thanatos?”

Thanatos breathes out, then bows his head. “Yes,” he admits.

“Do you love him?”

He considers, for a second, telling her about Aphrodite’s manipulation, his laughable predicament and the circumstances that led to it. But what would be the point? His answer is the same, regardless of how he came to know it. “Yes.”

“Oh.” It is Persephone’s turn to exhale, more unsteady than not, and as she does Thanatos realises she had been holding her breath awaiting his response. “Well. I see.” 

“I didn’t mean to,” Thanatos begins miserably, and Persephone chuckles, not unkind. 

“Does anyone ever mean to fall in love?” She smiles tiredly, pressing the heel of one hand against her creased forehead and briefly closing her eyes. “Oh, Thanatos - I’m sorry. I don’t have anything against you; you were a child last I saw you. I shouldn’t have been so angry. It’s just… it’s been hard, you know, getting Zagreus back after such a long time, and then having to let go again so soon.” 

“It is the same for me,” Thanatos confesses. “I cannot really be glad when he returns to the Underworld, because he is so unhappy. And when he’s gone…”

“...You miss him.” Persephone nods, rueful. “Yes. I miss him too, although his visits here are always marred by sickness.” 

Again, they lapse into silence, more companionable this time. This time, it is Thanatos who breaks it; after a minute, he tilts his head to one side and says, carefully, “If I may ask… What stops you from returning to the Underworld to see Zagreus? You have lived there before - I presume you would not suffer there, as he does here…?” 

“You presume correctly,” Persephone says, although she displays obvious reticence at this new line of questioning, shifting in her chair and drawing her shawl more tightly around herself. “It’s complicated,” she begins, then interrupts herself with an irritated sigh. “No, that isn’t a good enough answer, I know. I suppose I’m worried… that if I go there, I’ll be engulfed back into the fold as if I’d never left, and that I would find myself entirely unable to leave again. I’ve made a life for myself here, you know, as modest as it might seem to you.” 

“I understand,” Thanatos says, although he isn’t quite sure that’s true. “But…” He pauses, remembering the words Zagreus had spoken when he’d asked him to accompany him to the surface, that first time. “...It wouldn’t have to be forever. No one would stop you from coming back and forth. Just - for him.”

Persephone looks at him for a moment, her gaze level and inscrutable, and Thanatos worries he might finally have gone too far, but then she shrugs and says, wryly, “You’re probably right. My relationship with Hades was many things, but he wasn’t… controlling. Not like that. It’s more myself I worry about; that I’ll get there and forget the person I’ve spent the last few years becoming. I suppose that sounds terribly selfish, doesn’t it?” 

Thanatos shakes his head. “It isn’t for me to say,” he replies. It’s an uncharacteristically diplomatic answer, but he’s beginning to find that he respects her, this proud and stubborn woman. Her obstinacy reminds him of Zagreus; so too does her regal posture, the easy lift of her chin, the straight line of her spine. 

“Hm.” Persephone smiles thinly but otherwise doesn’t comment on his answer. Together they sit, while night falls outside and the breeze coming in through the open door grows chillier; neither of them are affected by the cold, but it seems to perturb Persephone regardless, as she gazes at the snow on the windowsill with a mournful expression and shadowed eyes that make her appear deep in thought. “I have a tendency to run away,” she says at last, quietly, slowly. “I… have struggled, with the expectations that have been placed on me. I have always rejected a life consisting of little more than duty and familial obligation.” 

Thanatos inclines his head in acknowledgement of her words. “You are the same as your son in that regard,” he says. 

“Ha. Yes.” Persephone pulls her gaze away from the window. “We are neither of us particularly good at confinement, I think. And yet - he was brave enough not just to run away, but to run _towards._ He sought me out, and he kept coming even when it hurt him… I think I owe it to him, perhaps, to make the journey myself, in turn.”

Thanatos stills, hardly daring to hope. “Do you mean…?” he says, hesitant, unwilling to speak the words in case his naked yearning sounds foolish, sitting gauchely in the air between them. 

Persephone bows her head graciously, a silent sign of assent. “Not forever, Thanatos, but yes, I’ll come back. I was so set against returning… I preferred to send Zagreus away than consider it, and I allowed him to suffer for my reticence. And I am ashamed. He is my son, and I should not resent that I am beholden to him, as I have for so long resented Hades and my mother both.” 

It is a bold, candid admission, and Thanatos does not know how to respond to it. Instead he nods, and hopes that his gratitude is plain enough already without him needing to give voice to it. 

“Do you think it will really help?” Persephone asks, as Thanatos stands to leave. He pauses, and turns back to her with a questioning expression. “He will still be bound to the Underworld,” she clarifies, her features wrinkled in a gentle frown, “whether I am there with him or not; do you truly think my presence will be enough to stop him from wanting to leave? From giving up his immortality?”

“I… I do not know,” Thanatos confesses, after a long moment’s thought. “But it is something, is it not? Perhaps… perhaps it will make him happier, and that on its own will be reward enough, I think, even if it does not solve everything.” It is only as he speaks that he realises the heartfelt truth of his own words, and so he continues, emboldened. “It is the simple fact of his pain that I find unbearable, far more than the steps he takes to alleviate it. And I have played a part in exacerbating that pain, out of duty, because I thought my love for him was unimportant, and should therefore be cast aside. I was wrong. The way I feel about him, it cannot be denied. It is vital; it is everything; and I am… I am undone, without it.” 

So much effort, over the years, to deny that Death _felt_ , even to himself; and after all that, it ended up being so easy just to say it, out loud and matter-of-fact, and to a woman he barely knows. And on the heels of that realisation comes another one: the nagging feeling that perhaps immortality does not have to mean stagnation, that perhaps there can still be change, and growth, even after countless years of sameness. He has been doing it all wrong, he thinks - what now is left to do but upend all he had thought of as fact, and in so doing throw his arms open wide to embrace the wild unknown?

*

Thanatos leaves Persephone to gather her things, and returns to the House of Hades. There, he descends through Tartarus until he locates Charon, then bids him to travel upstream, to give passage to the long-lost Queen of the Underworld. His brother says nothing, only nods and sets about his task, but as he pushes his oar into the crimson water Thanatos thinks he detects a glimmer of something that might be approval in the depths of his luminescent violet eye. 

After Charon has disappeared from view, Thanatos remains in Tartarus, and waits, blending into the shadows with the mastery of one accustomed to moving mostly in darkness. Zagreus and Persephone should be allowed to reunite unwitnessed, he thinks, and he does not want to seem expectant, as though Zagreus owes him affection for helping to bring back his mother. Deeper down, he is conscious of his own overwhelming guilt; indeed, the darkened recesses of Tartarus seem an appropriate location for him to skulk, here among the punished wicked, burdened down by the knowledge of his own mistakes and the weight of his own self-loathing. He does not expect Zagreus to forgive him, even with Persephone’s return, but he tries to tell himself that this doesn’t matter, really; true love should surely encompass a rejection of one’s own will and desires, and as long as Zagreus is happy, Thanatos, too, must be content. He intends to linger in Tartarus until he finally believes this with his entire heart, devoid of the misery and dejection that still shadows his steps and creeps at the edges of his consciousness. 

That’s the plan, anyway. Silently he moves from chamber to chamber, allowing the moans of the tormented to underscore his own self-flagellation, until time itself becomes nothing more than an obsolete, faded afterthought. It could be hours or days before it happens, before he rounds a corner and runs smack into Zagreus, Thanatos’ relative bulk leaving him functionally unscathed but sending Zagreus to the floor with a winded _oof._

“We make something of a habit out of that, don’t we?” Zagreus says, wincing and taking the hand Thanatos holds out in order to help pull him to his feet. 

It’s a knife to the heart, such a casual reference to the encounter that had changed the course of Thanatos’ life. But then, perhaps he is overstating it - perhaps the course was altered from the moment Nyx placed Thanatos in with Zagreus, freshly resurrected with flame-bright feet, and handed them a wooden toy to squabble over. “I suppose we do,” Thanatos manages to say, his voice coming out hoarse and thin, and then the sudden shock of the collision shunts out of the way to allow his surprise at seeing Zagreus here to rise to the fore instead. “Wait,” he says belatedly, suspiciously, “what are you doing down here? I thought Persephone…” 

“She’s here, Thanatos,” Zagreus says, and a slow smile spreads irrepressibly across his face as he speaks the words. “In the House of Hades. She really came back.”

It’s not until he hears the confirmation straight from Zagreus’ mouth that Thanatos realises how afraid he’d been in that brief second, fearing that Persephone might not have come after all, that his efforts may have been for naught. “That’s good, I’m glad,” he mumbles vaguely, hardly effusive but at the very least meaning what he says. “But if she’s here, then - you’re still leaving?” 

“Huh? What?” Zagreus frowns, confused, then seems to remember the fact of where they are and his expression clears as understanding visibly dawns. “Oh, no - I’m not trying to leave, Than, I came down looking for you. Meg said she saw you here, seeming, well,” - and at least he has the grace to look embarrassed, “...even more grim than usual, I think was how she put it.” 

“Oh,” says Thanatos flatly. 

“Persephone, I mean, my mother, she said that you came to see her. That you encouraged her to come back. She said… Well, she said that she’s sorry for not coming before, and that she wants to fix things with me and maybe with my father, too.” Here he stops for a moment, staring bemusedly off into the distance as if the concept of repairing a fractured relationship with Lord Hades is something that had not yet occurred to him as a possibility. Gods and their resolute natures, thinks Thanatos, aware of the irony in his exasperation. “Anyway,” Zagreus continues, “I wanted to thank you. For speaking to her.” 

“She would have come back anyway, I think,” Thanatos says, because it’s true.

“Yeah, maybe.” Zagreus shrugs, noncommittal. “But you still went, even though you didn’t have to, and I’m still grateful for it.” 

A tendril of hope reaches out from the depths of Thanatos’ chest, and he crushes it down remorselessly. “It was the least I could do, after what I did. You were right to be angry at me for it; I understand if you cannot forgive me.” 

“What? No, shut up, I don’t care about that. Not anymore, anyway.” Zagreus shakes his head, adding emphasis to his words. “I think… maybe it would have been a mistake, anyway, to give up my immortality. Especially now that Persephone is here, even if it’s not forever - and I can still go out and see the sun; I have my father’s permission, now, even.” 

“You still can’t live up there, though,” Thanatos says quietly.

Zagreus sighs, a small, wistful sound. “No. But I think you were right, there are some things I might just have to learn to accept. And… I don’t want to die, you know?” He glances to the side abashedly, his cheeks lightly pink, and in that moment he looks so earnest and alive Thanatos thinks he could fall in love with him all over again, just as he loves the mortals who throw themselves open-hearted towards all that living has to offer, in bright and loud defiance of their own impermanence, as though they consider their own bodies a gift to life itself. “I became quite cavalier about dying,” Zagreus is saying, his eyes trained on some inconsequential spot in the middle distance. “You know, it stopped seeming so serious to me, after the fortieth or fiftieth time I was killed trying to get out of this place. But - the coming back, it’s more important to me than I realised. I don’t want to give that up, Thanatos, and I am lucky enough that my birthright dictates I needn’t have to.”

“Oh,” says Thanatos again, and then, “Are you sure?” and the naked pleading in his own voice is so plainly apparent that he has to close his eyes against his own vulnerability. 

“Yes,” Zagreus says softly; “yes, I’m sure, I don’t want to die,” and he takes a step closer to Thanatos, a single, simple step, not doing anything other than standing, the heat of his body so near to Thanatos’ own a tantalising, irresistible pull. 

Thanatos opens his eyes. 

Zagreus’ face is so close, his eyes so clear; one a piercing green, the other vivid red, each fringed by lashes so thick and long Thanatos could probably count them if he set his mind to it. “What are you doing?” he asks instead, unsteadily, and there’s scarcely enough space between them to even hold the words. 

“I have flirted with dying,” Zagreus says, his voice low, and his gaze is restless now, roving all over Thanatos’ face before catching on his mouth and settling there. “I have been drawn to its clutches, not simply because dying was incidental to my longing for escape. It… attracts me, the darkness - I have spent many long hours attempting to puzzle it out. And now, after all that, I think I have isolated what it is that draws me in, and it’s you, Thanatos. All along, it was you. The way I feel when you’re near; my heart pounding like it does in battle, everything in me either trying to fight or clamouring to surrender, just like dying, only…” He breaks off with a ragged exhale. “...Only dying is a poor substitute, it turns out. You have a hold on me, Than, and I think, I think maybe you feel something for me too… We have been dancing around each other for so long, and if this is the time to be candid then I feel I must tell you and be done with it.”

Zagreus’ face, the intensity of his expression, the damp gleam of his lower lip; Thanatos couldn’t step away even if he wanted to. He is hard, he realises with a jolt, his body reacting to Zagreus’ proximity and his hot, secretive tone in a way that is so purely corporeal it takes him aback. He understands, he thinks, what Zagreus is saying, the sheer magnetism that draws them back to the other time and time again, the very magnetism that for so long Thanatos tried to deny, to suppress and ignore, until his self-imposed blinkers were tugged away and abruptly he could resist no longer. “You’re right,” he says, mouth dry. “I do… feel something for you. I have known it for a while, but - it isn’t a physical thing.” 

“It isn’t?” Zagreus says, and his eyes travel down the length of Thanatos’ torso, stopping at his crotch. He lifts his gaze again, point made, and raises a skeptical eyebrow. 

“It isn’t only physical,” Thanatos amends, painstakingly ignoring his own blush. 

“It isn’t for me, either,” Zagreus says, and he sounds eager now, keen to make Thanatos understand. “I… care for you, Than. Not in the way that I care for friends, or family. That is, I -”

“I love you,” Thanatos interrupts, because Zagreus’ bravery has never been in question, and Thanatos refuses to be a coward any longer. The words sound good, sure and proud, so he says them again before Zagreus can respond. “I love you, Zagreus, I - I didn’t think I was capable of such feeling, but I am, and it overwhelms me,” and then, because it feels right, because he’s had it stashed in his pocket ever since he stole it from the courtyard, he pulls Aphrodite’s rose out from within his tunic and presses it insistently into Zagreus’ open palm. 

“What…?” Zagreus raises it up, recognising it but not understanding. “This… this was mine.” 

“I stole it,” Thanatos says, unrepentant. “I thought that Aphrodite had charmed me; you, colliding into me with her boon equipped… I called on her to fix me.” He drops his eyes to the indifferent flower, its petals a pink so dusky it is almost carnal. “But it wasn’t her doing, I had felt that way all along, and everyone else seemed to know it before I did. All Aphrodite did was give me permission to feel it, to stop turning away from it, because even if I believed it was something that had been done to me, at least then I would have to acknowledge it. And once a thing is acknowledged; well, I have learned that it’s very hard to make it disappear again.” 

“Do you want it to disappear?” Zagreus hasn’t stepped back, hasn’t moved away at all, but now he’s holding himself very still and careful, awaiting Thanatos’ response.

“No,” Thanatos says. “I thought I did, for a long time. I tried. I didn’t think it was befitting of - of someone of my station.” He shakes his head in refutation of his earlier self, then admits; “I was wrong, Zagreus.” 

“You and your _godly purpose,_ ” Zagreus says, his posture smoothly relaxing, and his words are mocking but they are also gentle. “It seems thanks are owed to Aphrodite, then, for managing to sway you from your duty when even I could not.” 

“Still, you were right,” Thanatos allows. “You said there was more out there for me, and I refused to believe you.”

“I am quite often right, you know,” Zagreus says lightly. “Perhaps you should listen to me more often.” 

“No,” Thanatos says, then reaches out and presses his index finger softly into the plush centre of Zagreus’ lower lip, interrupting his incipient pout. “Perhaps I should kiss you.” 

“Oh,” Zagreus says, dazed suddenly, Thanatos’ finger still resting against his mouth. “Yes, yeah, I -” and he’s still babbling as Thanatos drops his hand, wraps it instead around Zagreus’ waist and pulls him in tighter, then leans down and kisses him. He feels a brief second of worry that it’s going to be awkward, that it won’t work, but their lips fit together smoothly and Zagreus is sighing happily into his mouth and the whole muscled line of his chest is warm and solid against Thanatos’ own, their hearts beating roughly in sync beneath layers of fabric and flesh and bone, and it’s perfect, it’s everything he could have wanted and more, it’s frankly unimaginable that he could have been having this all along and wasn’t, but at least now they have the rest of eternity to make up for it. He is grateful for their immortality, suddenly, that time will cease its ravages for them, that they will escape its relentless touch; they will have forever, or as near to it as they can imagine, to revisit this simple moment as often as they wish, lips and bodies meeting, wondrous life abounding. 

Eventually, Zagreus pulls away, his eyes wide and starry and his mouth a deep bruised pink. “Than, I love you too,” he says, his voice breathless, “I didn’t get to say it but I do, you know -” 

Thanatos marvels for a second, Zagreus’ hips pressed insistently to his even as he leans back and away with his upper body, and a series of quick images flashes through his head: Zagreus reaching out to lift a strand of Thanatos’ hair, his face so artfully casual, Zagreus turning his back on the world to ask Thanatos to come with him, eyes intent and steady even as his way forward stood open behind him, Zagreus dazed and fading in Persephone’s bed, looking up at Thanatos and smiling, thinking for a second he had dreamed him there.

“I know,” Thanatos says, and smiles. “Do you think I should grow my hair?”

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr [here](http://opinionhaver69.tumblr.com), and on twitter [here](http://twitter.com/apocryphai)!


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